David Huron and Richard Parncutt
Psychomusicology, Vol. 12 (1993) pp. 154-171.
The tone profile method of key determination (Krumhansl, 1990) predicts key and key changes in a range of western tonal styles. However, the tone profile method fails to account for certain important effects in tonality perception (Butler, 1989). A modified version of Krumhansl's method of key determination is described that takes into accont (a) subsidiary pitches and pitch salience according to Terhardt, Stoll, and Seewann (1982a, 1982b), and (b) the effect of sensory memory decay. Both modifications are shown to improve the correlation between model predictions and experimental data gathered by Krumhansl and Kessler (1982) on the tonality of harmonic progressions. However, the new model described here fails to account for Brown's (1988) experimental findings on the tonality of melodies. The results here are consistent with the view that both structural and functional factors play a role in the perception of tonality.